Today, more and more people drive longer distances, often riding motorcycles or bicycles to get to work and for recreation. Sometimes, however, these tires hit obstructions in the road, which lead to tire puncture wounds. While certain tire repair kits have allowed for temporary or even reasonably secure repairs to the tires, riders and passengers, in their zest to the repair the punctured tire do more harm by good by either damaging the tire repair tool or injuring themselves.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,716,792 (Hector) (herein incorporated by reference) discloses a tool to repair a tire puncture wherein a repair between the user's fingers and loaded into a tool tube with a brass point at the end of the plug sticking out. The user then finds the puncture site of the tire, removes the puncture object using pliers, and aligns the tube with the angle of the puncture, and pushes the preair plug through the hole in the tire tread plies. The tool is retracted from the tire, and the tail of the repair plug sticks out of the tire and the excess is cut off.
Off times, however, users inserted the tool in the tire incorrectly such that the tube was not pushed axially keeping the tool perpendicular to the surface of the puncture being repaired or they did not follow the correct angular path of puncture entry. Consequently, the misuse of the tool resulted in a side force parallel to the tire surface such that the tool tube was bent and disabled.
In other situations, after multiple uses, the steel tube gets abraded as it penetrates the steel belt of the tire when a repair is made. If the lead edge of the tube gets too rough or jagged, it becomes much more difficult to make a successful repair since the rough edge increases the force needed to penetrate the tire in the puncture path made by an object like a nail or screw that originally punctured and compromised the tire.
In other instances, users do not fully compress the cord of the plug by rolling it in their fingers, and in some cases the cord and the tip are held with two hands, one on the cord and one on the metal tip. Consequently, the plugs metal tip is twisted and it breaks off of the cord and a repair cannot be completed.